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Gwendolyn Stacy (Earth-61610)
'''Gwendolyn "Gwen" Stacy, also known as Spider-Woman, was a superhuman vigilante (Marvel) in the New York City of Earth-61610. At present, she is believed to be dead.' History Early Life Gwendolyn Maxine Stacy was born in Queens to George and Helen Stacy, a police officer and IT consultant respectively. Both parents doted on her when they had the time, but the growing rift between husband and wife took a gradual toll on the family, as well as young Gwen's emotional state. The eventual divorce was a relief in more ways than one; for the first few years following Gwen and her brothers divided their time between her mother and father with little trouble, although she had a slight favoring of her father. She also began to display a prodigious intelligence, devouring literature well above her age level and becoming increasingly fascinated with the work of past and present radical (i.e., mad) scientists. She began engaging in experimentation and tinkering of her own, mostly in the alleged cause of increasing the efficiency of preexisting designs--a pastime that frustrated both her parents until she was forbidden to dismantle household appliances or experiment on her brothers. Adolescence Gwen largely kept to herself in middle school, preferring to focus on her studies rather than social life. Having a deep admiration for her father, she infrequently took to helping ward off bullies in defense of their targets. This earned her several enemies, but also a close friend in the form of Carlie Cooper. Eighth grade brought her another friend. Gwen had had some history with Harry Osborn; their fathers had many of the same friends (albeit for wildly different reasons) and so the two had met more than once before. This familiarity caused them to gravitate to each other, but clashing personalities prevented any real relationship until Harry tried to bribe her into doing the assignment assigned at the end of the semester. Gwen refused, but offered to help him do it himself; working together allowed the two to bond and by the time it was finished they were thick as thieves. So it was throughout what remained of middle school and the first semester of freshman year at Standard High School. OsCorp Expo and Powers Under normal circumstances, Osborn Corporations (stylized as OsCorp) is a fairly secretive company. Any corporation that employs radical scientists ''en masse has to be, seeing as radical scientists are only slightly more well-liked than mutants, but during the January of Gwen's freshman year of high school OsCorp decided to stage an exhibition of some of their safer projects. Gwen's science teacher staged a class contest with tickets to this expo as a prize--an incentive that Gwen alone was excited by. She, in addition to two classmates, won tickets in the end. At the expo Gwen met Peter Parker, a student of a rival school, and the two immediately took a liking to each other. During a tour of the Recombinant Biology lab, however, the expo was interrupted by a shooter seeking to kill OsCorp workers and destroy the work he saw as immoral. When the gunman made his way up to the Recombinant lab, Gwen and Peter decided to attempt to stop him rather than hide. Their actions compromised the containment of several spiders grown from recombinant DNA, a strain of the experimental Oz virus, and the compound developed by Doctors Banner and Ross years before; but they managed to keep the gunman from killing anyone else and kept him occupied long enough for the police to apprehend him. Gwen was reprimanded by her father for her recklessness, and by the scientists for the damage done to laboratory equipment. Unbeknownst to everyone, several spiders had escaped; one of them had bitten Peter's hand, and another had stuck to Gwen and would bite her on her way home. After a night of restless sleep interspersed with periods of excruciating pain, Gwen woke the next morning to find a host of altered abilities, ranging from vastly increased strength and speed to a hypersensitivity to vibrations in the air and objects in contact with her. Still feeling sick and with lingering pangs of tingling soreness, she got permission to take the day off from school. While home alone, she found that her hands and feet were sticking uncontrollably to anything she touched; that she could no longer feel her own body weight, that she was constantly starving; but that eating was for now making her physically sick. At last Gwen discovered to her horror that her major blood vessels had darkened in hue: a known effect of the compound Banner and Ross had created when activated by gamma particles. She concluded, half-rightly, that she was suffering from radiation poisoning, and rushed to contact the prominent (but retired) radiologist Dr. Kirby. Numerous tests led him to conclude that she had, indeed, been exposed to a massive dose of radiation, but had also somehow been injected with a modified version of Banner's compound, which absorbed the radiation to make proteins and helped to repair DNA. As it sank in that Gwen's radiation sickness would fade and she would recover in mere days, her focus began to shift to the abilities she had been noticing, from vastly increased strength and speed to her hands adhering to anything they touched. Gwen was relatively quick to associate her newfound abilities with the experimental spiders, and just as quickly decided not to draw attention to herself or her powers, possibly fearing legal action from OsCorp. This was unfortunately not a sentiment shared by whoever else had recieved a spider bite, the exploits of whom began to seep into public consciousness through rumors and blurred photographs. As Gwen searched for and found more information on the masked, wall-crawling vigiante fighting street and organized crime, she began to suspect her new friend Peter, who denied any involvement. Her suspicions were confirmed when the vigilante was defeated on live television by an armored man called the Scorpion; recognising Peter's voice and horrified by the beating he took, Gwen confronted him the next day and demanded he give up his vigilantism. The Patton Parnell Incident "Spider-Woman" "Death" and Revival Current Exploits Powers and Abilities "Active" Powers Superhuman Strength: When unaffected by outside factors (including but not limited to: Fatigue, adrenaline, sedatives, stimulants, or radiation), Gwen is capable of lifting approximately 150 times her weight without risking injury. Although this means she gets stronger as she finishes growing, her "default" upper limit is usually stated to be about 10 tons. However, as she rarely is unaffected by outside factors, this can vary from day to day to some degree. Gwen's strength also extends to her legs; she is capable of jumping 100 feet into the air and, given a running start, nearly 600 feet forward. Superhuman Durability: Gwen's body has become tougher and more resistant to most forms of physical injury. Although she is far from invulnerable, her tissues are conditioned to withstand great impact forces. She is capable of falling over 100 feet with no discomfort, and regularly withstands blows that would devastate an ordinary human. Similarly, although she is neither bullet nor bomb-proof, most lower-caliber bullets stop almost immediately upon entering her flesh, and she evidently has some inbuilt resistance to concussive explosions and shrapnel. Although being caught in the epicenter of a massive explosion from hundreds of grenades did kill her, there was enough of her body left intact that she could be revived given the replacement of several detroyed limbs and organs (a normal human, by contrast, would have been vaporized). Superhuman Speed: When unaffected by outside factors, Gwen is capable of reaching a speed of approximately 33-35 times her body length per second. This gives her a sprint of approximately 130 miles per hour, although heat buildup and lack of air prevent her from maintaining this for more than about 10 seconds. She can, however, maintain a "jog" of roughly 80 mph for extended periods of time. Quick bursts of this super speed allow Gwen to move (on average) twenty feet without appearing to occupy the intervening space: a maneuver sometimes known as a "flash step." Superhuman Stamina: Gwen's body has been altered to be significantly more efficient than a normal human's, to accommodate her other powers. Her stamina allows her to operate at a moderate level of exertion for an extended length of time; she is capable of maintaining her aforementioned "jog" for nearly forty-five minutes, and can exert three tons of force many times without showing much strain. When fighting an enemy that requires her to use her full strength and speed, however, moving at 130 mph and lifting 10 tons, she is observed to tire quickly.. Superhuman Agility: Gwen's agility, balance, equilibrium, and coordination are enhanced far beyond the natural physical limits of the finest human athlete. Gwen is extraordinarily limber and her tendons and connective tissues are twice as elastic as the average human's, despite their enhanced strength and durability. Superhuman Reflexes and Perception: Due to her vastly increased nerve conduction velocity, Gwen's reflexes and processing speed have been enhanced to roughly 40 times those of a normal human. Although this means she can see the flicker of florescent lights and perceive individual frames of movies, she does not perceive the world as moving in "slow motion"; in Peter’s words, she simply "keeps up better." In conjunction with her spider-sense, this allows her to dodge almost any attack, up to and including most gunfire (she has noticed the ability to see bullets, but with difficulty and rarely as more than a blur). Adhesion: '''The skin cells of Gwen's palms, fingers, soles and toes have grown a collection of incredibly small fibers similar to a spider's setae, which when extended are attracted to nearby molecules via the van der Waals force. This attraction allows her to adhere to anything from textured walls to sheer surfaces like glass with an upper limit of several tons per finger. Although Gwen is capable of extending and retracting these setules at will, they appear to be extended by default, as evidenced by the many times she has adhered to something without realizing. '''Hypersensitivity to Vibration: Gwen's sense of touch has been altered to be able to detect subtle vibrations and changes in air pressure, to a degree unmatched by normal humans. She can feel the brief increases in air pressure caused by movements in her immediate surroundings; although the precise limit of this ability is not known, she has been able to feel large objects moving nearly a hundred feet behind her. Similarly, she can feel vibrations through solid objects: she has been known to detect footsteps through the floor originating from hundreds of feet away, and frequently searches large areas by using webbing to extend the range of this ability. This constant sensitivity is at times overwhelming or uncomfortable to Gwen, but for the most part she is capable of filtering it out. Category:Earth-61610 Category:Versions of Gwen Stacy